Basic Principles of the Trager® Approach: An exploration of movement skills for bodywork practitioners

What is the value of movement to a bodywork practitioner? Can you do your work without movement? What occurs to your body if you limit your movement to a minimum? How could you move more freely and easily? What occurs as you come into contact with the tissue of your client? A basic concept of the Trager® Approach is that your movement as practitioner deepens the ability to feel.

To become aware of your own body as the practitioner, to find and release your own tension, to feel your own freedom of movement allows you to share a possibility of something remarkable with your client. What you share with your client is a feeling experience. You may share the feeling of softness, of ease, of peace. Being conscious of your own movement allows you to be more comfortable in space, and that comfort moves through your hands into the tissue of your client.

As this awareness of your own movement deepens, you as the practitioner are better able to feel the pattern of holding in the body of the client. It is as simple as this: when the client's structure will not move easily, the practitioner's body will not move easily. As the client's body begins to move more freely, the feeling of something more free becomes instantly available to the practitioner. It is possible for practitioners to do this in an effortless way, remaining aware of the slightest responses and working effectively without any fatigue.

The skills to come to this manner of working are simple ones. Pausing is a profound skill to develop. Several things occur when you pause. You provide perspective to both yourself and your client. Here is the feeling of touch and movement, now, here is the feeling of quiet and peace. Pausing allows you to rest, and teaches through example and feeling the value of rest to the client. The moments of no sensory input from your touch gives the client an opportunity to integrate the work.

Another skill to explore is feeling weight. To feel weight requires gentle movement. Place a penny in your palm and feel its weight. Is it easier to do so with your hand static, or easier if you move your hand up and down gently? To deepen this skill, you will need to do less. The less you try, the more you will be able to feel. The less you do, the more your client will be able to feel. This relationship between doing less and feeling more seems to be boundless. Milton Trager, in discussing this after seventy years of doing his bodywork form said: "I am just scratching the surface." He would repeat to his students, over and over, class after class "Feel the weight."

Asking is a skill of value. Gentle movement can access the unconscious mind, the autonomic nervous system. When we ask simple questions, such as "What could be softer? And softer than that?" we enter unconscious mind. If you have any experience with meditation, you know the feeling of coming into this state. By entering this place of gentle quiet by asking simple questions, intuition comes forth and your work can move beyond technique and become art. It is a place from which great things can happen for both you - and your client.

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Field Hockey Stick Self-Help

A tool for all seasons. Do you have a winter backache shoveling snow? Are you a seasonal athletic over-doer? Did you torque your back getting the baby out of the back seat? Sometimes you can’t see your friendly bodyworker or physical therapist. How about do-it-yourself? Carefully, of course!

There are commercial massage products that have a J-hook shape for reaching the hard-to-reach back areas. But I use and prefer a field hockey stick. Track down a stick from the attic or basement; ask your sister, mother, daughter, or Indo-Pakistani cousin. The older models with a longer, more English-shaped head (see photo) make the best probe for muscles that are tight or in spasm. The more modern models with stubby or hooked heads at the end of the stick don’t have as long a reach or as pointed an end to reach the small muscles between the vertebra.

The field hockey stick can be used in a two-handed manner reaching the upper spinal muscle area over either shoulder or around to the mid and lower back reaching under either arm. Work gently and sensitively on the muscles, avoid painful contact and avoid work on any vertebral bones. You want to gently press on the soft tissue between bones or in muscle-mass. You can often locate a sore point or area with the tip of the stick, apply moderate (but not uncomfortable) pressure and gently twist the spinal area effecting a stretch or opening in the tight area. Probe further and repeat the pressure with the stick and the opening stretch. When you find affected painful areas, don’t work long or hard -- just give the feeling of relief, ease and openness to the area. Avoid over-working or bruising the soft tissue. In this self-treatment, you are in charge. You are aiming at pain relief not pain creation. You are responsible and you are the expert on how you feel.